Coal Block Auction Update: 6 Blocks enter the second round

Coal block auction envisaged by the Coal Ministry has received lame response from the bidders as only 6 out of the 27 blocks put up for sale have made it to the second round. Apparently, the remaining blocks have been withdrawn due to lack of participation.

As a matter of fact, all the coal blocks floated under the 9th Tranche of auction were annulled, leaving the 6 blocks from 8th and 10th Tranche to thrive onto the next round of auction.

It is pertaining to note that 20 coal blocks under 8th Tranche, 6 under 9th Tranche and 1 under 10th Tranche were put under hammer for the current scheme of coal block auction.

List of Successful Bidders in Block Auction:

Under the 8th Tranche of auction, five blocks had met the qualification criteria of receiving minimum three independent bids to move onto the stage-II of the auction process.

13 coal blocks which had collected fewer than three bids were terminated, with seven of them receiving no bids at all. Meanwhile, two blocks namely, Bundu and Chitarpur, had received three technical bids in total, but were terminated as the aggregate of total number of independent technical bids and/or cluster was less than three.

* Vedanta had made two official bids for the block.

9th Tranche of Auction: All the 6 coal blocks were terminated as they fail to procure minimum of three bids to survive the first round of auction. Rohne and Urtan North blocks didn’t even manage a single bid in the process.

The 10th Tranche was the most successful in the lot, as the only coal block floated under the scheme had fetched 7 bids in total.

* Vedanta had made two official bids for the block.

Vedanta Shows Urgency to Procure Coal Blocks: Vedanta was among the most active participants in the auction process, having a hand in bids for procurement of 7 coal blocks namely-Bhaskarpara, Bikram, Brahmapuri, Gare Palema IV-1, Jamkhani, Bundu and Chitarpur.

However, among these auction for Bundu and Chitarpur blocks have been annulled, but the company still remains in contention for acquiring the remaining five blocks.

Schedule for Stage-II of Auction:
The remaining 6 blocks are qualified for the stage-II of the auction process which is scheduled during 1-8 Nov’19, with each day marked for a separate block.

The stage-II entitled as the financial bidding would be carried out in two rounds. In the first round the initial price offer of the technically qualified bids would be opened and ranked on the basis of descending order for determination of the qualified bidders. The qualified bidders shall be eligible to participate in the electronic auction and submit their final price offer with respect to each qualified bid.